Citizen of the Week!

Don't assume that because Deep Arora won a top prize at a math competition that women wouldn't find him irresistible. On February 16, 2006, Emily, whom he'd met online that evening, invited Arora to drive from Placentia (where he lived with his parents) to her Laguna Beach apartment. The 19-year-old college student aiming for a degree in engineering at Fullerton College couldn't wait for the rendezvous. As he drove down Interstate 5 and then Laguna Canyon Road towards the Pacific Ocean, he shared his excitement via phone with his upcoming date.

“He said his dick was jumping,” Emily recalled. “He said, 'I'll lick your pussy.' I said, 'Okay.' He asked if I knew that the first time you do sex blood comes out of your pussy. I said, “Uh-huh.' He said to be prepared [because] he would kill my pussy. I said not to kill it because I want it to live. He said he'd fuck me hard. I said I couldn't wait.”

Too bad that Arora's date was 12 years old. Or, to be precise, he thought his date was 12 and her doctor father wouldn't return home for hours. Emily was actually 25-year-old Monique Bedard, a sex sting decoy working for PervertedJustice.com in conjunction with detectives from the Laguna Beach Police Department.

Imagine Arora's shock when he knocked on the door expecting youthful accolades for the gifts he brought: candy bars, fruit candy rolls and chocolate-flavored condoms. Instead, “He slumped over and began to cry,” a Laguna detective remembers. “He said he knew it was wrong and he was sorry.”

But after hiring a defense lawyer, Arora denied guilt and fought the charges. He pointed out that he'd been entrapped; he was a young immigrant who'd arrived from India less than two years earlier; he knew the girl told him she was 12 but that he thought it was part of the enticement for wild sex by an adult female; he'd had no prior criminal record; and, finally, that he was “not aware of some of the customs of this country.”

During a five-day trial in 2007, a jury heard the case brought by Orange County prosecutor Beth Carmichael as well as Arora's defense and sided with the government. For attempting a lewd act on a minor under the age of 14, he received a year in county jail and three years' worth of formal probation. Superior Court Judge Craig E. Robison also ordered him to stay away from porno, avoid places where minors congregate, wear a GPS unit on his leg and to register as a sex offender.

But after accepting the terms, Arora decided he was being punished too harshly. He filed an appeal, claiming that law enforcement agents should not be allowed to randomly search his residence during his probationary period. He argued that unlike a convicted bandit who could hide stolen loot or a drug addict who could store illegal narcotics, folks like him nabbed for pedophile activities don't hide their potential crime “instrumentalities” at home.

The appellate court didn't buy it.

(Wednesdays at OCWeekly.com, discover the depths of human depravity in Orange County, California.)

R. Scott Moxley’s award-winning investigative journalism has touched nerves for two decades. An angry congressman threatened to break Moxley’s knee caps. A dirty sheriff promised his critical reporting was irrelevant and then landed in prison. Corporate crooks won’t take his calls. Murderous gangsters mad-dogged him in court. The U.S. House of Representatives debated his work. Pusillanimous cops have left hostile messages using fake names. Federal prosecutors credited his stories for the arrest of a doctor who sold fake medicine to dying patients. And a frantic state legislator literally caught sleeping with lobbyists sprinted down state capital hallways to evade his questions in Sacramento.